


Ice

by Gwen77



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-19 02:29:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19347691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwen77/pseuds/Gwen77
Summary: Another “Jaime lives” AU. Many thanks to Ro_Nordmann for the gorgeous cover!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Лед](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20030164) by [ms_dorothea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_dorothea/pseuds/ms_dorothea)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Ro_Nordmann for the gorgeous cover!

She stood in the snow for a long time, she later realised. Long enough that ice had crystallised in the sleeves of her robe and on her eyelashes; long enough that she was too numbed to shiver; long enough that her chest felt utterly emptied of all feeling and her stomach was a block of hollowed ice. Long enough that, in the morning, she could report his departure to Lady Sansa and the Targaryen queen in a clear enough voice, without tears.

She had not been able to meet Lady Sansa’s eyes or anyone else’s. She had looked at the air just before their faces and let their features become a blur. But her voice and face had been all right; her grip on Oathkeeper at her side had held her, somehow, steadied her, let her listen to them quarrel and reason about Jaime and his loyalties and his future and his death as if it was all politics and war, all part of the game. The queen was angry, very angry, because all betrayals—no matter by whom—angered her now and she seemed to blame Tyrion for this one for some reason, interrogating him fiercely about what information Jaime had and what he might do with it. She asked Brienne the same questions and Brienne told her and then they let her go and she went out into the courtyard and trained with Pod in the snow until she felt that the ice in her stomach had spread to the tips of her fingers and down to her feet, until she felt as if she was made entirely of ice and stone.

As ice and stone, she found, it was possible to do most things. Sleep was difficult. Meeting the eyes of certain people—Lady Sansa, Pod, Tyrion Lannister—was difficult. But training was easy and listening to Lady Sansa think aloud and answer her was easy and riding to King’s Landing and hearing the endless talk that came after the end of the war was easy. Being Lord Commander of the Kingsguard was easy.

Two moments, only, felt like a crack in the ice. One was when Tyrion had told her that he had not found the bodies—he had searched and searched—but that he was fairly sure that Cersei and Jaime were drowned.

“I left him a boat,” he said. “But he didn’t find it—he didn’t take it. It was still there.”

“Perhaps he took another,” Brienne said. She kept her eyes on his hands, his boots. She could hear the thickness of tears in his voice, knew they would be standing in his eyes; she could not, could not let herself start weeping again or it would never end.

“There was no other,” Tyrion said. “I think he must have tried to—swim. Carrying. Carrying her. She couldn’t swim.”

Brienne said nothing. Tyrion began to weep and she managed, somehow, to put her hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said formally. “I know he was.” Was. Her own composure cracked, then, and something black and hollow opened in her chest. Her vision swam. She swallowed, forced the blackness down. “You know how he loved you.”

“And you,” Tyrion said and her hand flew away from his shoulder as if he had scalded her. She took a step away.

“He loved you,” Tyrion said, insistently, and she had a fleeting appalling desire to turn her strength against him, to fling him bodily out of the room. She swallowed that too. He was trying, in his way, to be a comfort. An argument would do no good.

“Perhaps,” she said, in lieu of anything else she could say. “Do you wish. If you wish. I can ask my men to continue the search for the.” Her voice cracked and she caught it. “For the bodies.”

“No,” Tyrion said wearily. “There’s enough else for the Kingsguard to do. Thank you, Ser Brienne.”

She nodded and left him. The common room of the White Sword Tower was empty, awaiting her. The book lay in its place. She took it, held it, let the ice thicken a little more before she opened it. She held steady all the way through, then, until the time came for the final sentence, the last sentence of Jaime Lannister’s story. The black thing opened up again at that, awful, clawing at her, trying to take the pen out of her hands. He left me. He wouldn’t stay. He chose to die with her, not live with me. All truths, but all maudlin and foolish and irrelevant. She forced the pen steady and finished the story, gave it its proper ending. Jaime had died, in the end, for loyalty as well as love; it was proper that later knights should know of and honour the loyalty, even if they could not understand the love.

That was the second moment of danger. After that, she went on easily, encased. The work was endless, complex, demanding, important; the men were eager but green and in need of training; she slept only a handful of hours a night anyway, and that could usually be managed by the recital to herself of the next day’s work. Once or twice, her dreams were bad and there were danger points just as she was falling asleep—her sleepy mind would unexpectedly, horribly, evoke a sense memory of his arm about her waist, behind her, the scratch of his beard, the warm breath of his sigh in her ear—and then she would get out of bed and find some piece of work to do and leave sleep till the next night or the one after.

It wasn’t too bad, ultimately, as the weeks and then the months wore on and Tyrion stopped looking at her with even a hint of pity. There was so much to do, rebuilding King’s Landing, shoring up the ruins of the six kingdoms. It would see her through the rest of her life, she thought; the work, at least, would outlive her.

Her father wrote once, formally, asking whether she meant to marry—the King wanted married men for the Kingsguard, now, so the oath was no security—and, if not, whether she would promise to name her infant cousin, Alwyn, heir after her. She agreed and so the course of her life seemed smooth and solid, set in its path. She would not marry. She would rebuild King’s Landing. After her father’s time, she would return to Tarth and formally adopt Alwyn and bring him up as her heir. When she died, they would write her name in the White Book and tell what she had done; perhaps they need not even mention how she had come to be a knight and whose hand had put Oathkeeper into hers.

Jaime. His name came into her mind at random, at odd times of the day, blinding moments of blackness and pain, like twinges from a forgotten wound. She had thought at first that time might do something, would reduce how often she thought of him or the intensity of the flashes. It did not. Six months passed and then a year, and still it went on and on. But they were only flashes, momentary, barely interrupting the flow of her day, her work. No one could see them, or guess at them; she could, she thought, live with them. And then, a year and four months and eleven nights after the night Jaime had ridden away from her to his death, Tyrion knocked on her door in the night. He was breathless, shaking, and the first sight of his face told her what he must have to say.

“You’ve found them,” she said, watching him pace in the candlelight, up and down her narrow room. “The bodies.”

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Not—bodies.”

Her heart dropped.

“What do you mean?” she asked. There was a quiver in her voice that she could do nothing about. The fantasy that she never, never let herself indulge—the one image that she refused to allow to linger in her mind for even a moment, even on the worst nights—

“They’re alive,” Tyrion said. “We found them. Jaime and Cersei. Alive.”

Her mouth opened soundlessly. _Where_ she had meant to ask but no air came. Tyrion went on, not needing the question, stumbling in his excitement.

“They were in a village. A fishing boat picked them up. They’ve been hiding. Playing smallfolk. An ordinary couple, fisherfolk.” He huffed a laugh, shaky. “Who’d have thought Cersei could have pulled that off. A fishwife. _Cersei_.”

“How do you know?” Brienne found voice, at last, to ask. “How can you be sure it’s them?”

“I’ve seen him,” Tyrion said. “Jaime.” His voice broke. He tried another laugh, weaker than the first. “Jaime the fisherman, bringing his catch to market. In King’s Landing. I’ve _got_ him, Brienne. He’s here.”

_He’s here._ A wave of dizziness swept over her and she blinked it away. She made herself think.

“Why?” she said at last.

Tyrion gave her a confused look.

“Why what?”

“Why—” her throat closed and she had to force the words out. “Why did you take him? You could have—why not let them be?”

“Let them _be_?” Tyrion repeated, staring up at her as if she was mad. “You can’t seriously believe my sister means to live out her years as a fishwife. She wants the throne back.”

Brienne stared, baffled.

“She has no army,” she pointed out and Tyrion smiled, a grim little smile with no humour in it.

“She has—had Jaime,” he said. “She sent him here as her spy, Brienne. To find Lannister loyalists. To drop a word here and there. To begin the next war.”

It was a nightmare. It never ended. Another war. Another battlefield. Another war against Cersei, a war against Jaime. She felt sick.

“So you arrested him,” she said in a leaden voice and Tyrion shook his head.

“He came to me,” he said. “He told me. He wants. He wants it to stop.”

He handed her a paper. A map, hastily sketched but clear, with a bold X that marked a particular spot by the river, only a few hours north of King’s Landing.

“I promised him clemency for her,” he said. “And I promised—I promised you would be the one to arrest her.”

Brienne’s hands were shaking. She could hardly hold the paper.

“Someone else,” she said. “I’ll send a squadron. Pod. He won’t hurt her.”

“I promised him,” Tyrion said. “You’re the only person he trusts with this, Brienne. With her. He wouldn’t have given me that—” he gestured to the paper—“if I hadn’t sworn it would be you.”

She wanted, absurdly, to laugh. Of course. He had sworn it would be her and he was the Hand of the King and she was sworn to arrest who he told her to arrest. They make you swear and swear.

“You’ll come with me, then,” she said savagely. “You’ll be the one to tell her.”

He flinched but nodded.

“Wait for me,” she said. “I’ll be half an hour, with the men.”

“All right,” Tyrion said. He hesitated. “Do you. There’s time, if you wish to see him.”

She shook her head, blindly, and he gave her a long look and then nodded and trotted away. She tried to make herself imagine it—seeing him—and then let it go. She would see him, eventually, inevitably. She couldn’t let herself think of that now. She got into her armour, hastily, grateful for its cool enclosing weight, and went to rouse Pod and the handful of other men she trusted on this journey.

The night air was cool and crisp, the beginnings of winter this far south. The wind blew chill in her face as she rode, Tyrion before her and Pod behind, and she kept her eyes on the road, silver and shadowy in the moonlight, and thought only of the remembered taste of snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea where this is going but I am still not over season 8. I apologise in advance for the wallowing angst.


	2. Chapter 2

The village hardly deserved the name—it was a scattered assemblage of rickety huts, barely ten in total, the few paths all mud. Everything was damp and brown, stinking of fish. Brienne called a halt and Tyrion drew up beside her. He looked ill, grey and drawn in the pale light of the beginning day. Brienne looked at him and then dismounted and turned to face the men she had brought. Only Pod knew their errand, the identity of the prisoner; none of the others needed to know. 

“Wait here,” she said. “Lord Tyrion and I will go on alone.”

She saw Pod open his mouth in protest and shook her head at him, warningly. There was no danger, not the kind that could be fended off with a sword, and the fewer people who took Cersei, in this place, the better. Tyrion shot her a swift glance—gratitude, and something like surprise. She ignored both. She had forced her mind to narrow the next few hours to something very simple and stark, a series of steps. Find Cersei. Let Tyrion talk to her. Escort her to King’s Landing for her trial. Return to her desk and her work. If she let her gaze waver for one moment from the steps, if she let even a hint of anything else pierce the walls that bordered that narrow path, she would be done for. Tyrion could keep his gratitude to himself.

They walked in silence up the slimy path to the hut that Jaime had marked on the map. The frail door—driftwood, it looked like, roughly carved and hinged to the wall with a few nails—was shut. There were no windows. Tyrion looked at the door for a long time, but at last he gathered his courage and knocked. A long time seemed to pass, a minute or more. He knocked again. Brienne braced herself. If she had to smash down this door—she stopped herself. If she had to smash it down, she would. It was only another step. Another minute passed. She stepped forward and then the door swung open.

The woman was thin, very thin. Her long blonde hair was dirty, and straggled over her face; her hands were bones. For a moment, Brienne thought the whole thing was a mistake, a hallucination. Cersei Lannister was dead; Jaime was dead; it was Tyrion who had lost his mind and brought them here, to this fragile stranger’s door. Then she spoke, and the voice was clear and strong and utterly unaltered. 

“You,” was all she said but it was enough. Only Cersei spoke so, with that cold venomous clarity. _You love him._ Brienne swallowed and tightened her hand on the hilt of her sword and forced her mind back to her task. Let Tyrion talk.

Tyrion said nothing. They stood there in a strange little pocket of silence and it was Cersei who moved, who came forward and drew her hair back from her hollowed cheek and showed them her face: pale, skeletal, dirt-smudged, and still beautiful. She was looking at Tyrion. She seemed not to see Brienne, and Brienne looked at Tyrion too and saw his terrible struggle for speech from a great distance. She was aware, far away, of a movement of pity for him, of horror. It was very far. The only reality was the hilt of Oathkeeper under her hand and her instructions to herself. Let Tyrion talk.

“Jaime,” Tyrion said at last and Cersei’s face changed, a flicker of something distorting her mouth. “Jaime sent us.”

At that _us_ , Cersei’s eyes turned to Brienne. Brienne met her gaze without flinching. She knew that some awful feeling was stirring in her, rising like a tide, but that was very far away too and she need not pay attention to it. Her walls held. Cersei was the first to look away, back to her brother. She stepped forward, out of the hut and into the grey dawn light. She was wearing some kind of brown shawl, of a coarse weave like sacking. Perhaps it was sacking. Her feet were bare and dirty. But she carried her head as she always had, steady under the weight of her invisible crown, and her eyes and mouth and the set of her jaw were unmistakeable. It really was her. Alive. 

“I promised him clemency,” Tyrion said into the frozen silence. “For both of you.”

“Did you,” Cersei said and Brienne took a step forward then, instinctively protective of the Hand of the King. She had never heard that Cersei had personally laid violent hands on anyone and, in her present state, she was no physical match even for Tyrion. But the malice in her was like a force in itself. Brienne wanted to draw Oathkeeper, her hand tightening even further on its hilt. Cersei’s eyes flickered to the sword and then to Brienne’s face.

“And I suppose he insisted you send his beast for me,” she said. “To protect me.” Her mouth twisted. “You told me once that you don’t serve my brother, Lady Brienne. And yet here you are, running his errand.”

“It’s the King’s errand,” Tyrion said and Brienne did catch Cersei’s wrists, then, as her hands made a clawing motion towards her brother.

“The _King_?” she snarled. “That _cripple_ you put in my place?” Her wrists, in Brienne’s grip, were so frail that Brienne was afraid to exert any pressure at all; she made no struggle to release them, glaring down at Tyrion and ignoring Brienne.

“I never thought you could become a worse traitor than you are,” she said. “We are the last of your name. The last of your blood. And you come here to destroy us, on the orders of your _King._ ”

Tyrion looked at Brienne.

“Will you bring her?” he said. His voice was choked, small. Brienne looked down at Cersei in her grip.

“I don’t want to drag you,” she said quietly. “Will you come?”

She came, walking slowly on sore feet. Brienne still held one of her wrists, for safety’s sake, and Tyrion led the way back to the silent, waiting men. Brienne took Cersei up on her own horse, strapped her securely behind her, careful not to bruise her pale translucent skin. Cersei was still staring at her as she worked, coldly malevolent, but it didn’t matter. Only two steps now. The ride to King's Landing, the delivery of her prisoner. She would go up to the Tower after that, look at the plans for the newest sewer system and the business about the dangerous roofs in the east district. She mounted and they began the ride.

“You’ve changed,” Cersei said softly, breaking an hour of silence. Her voice was directly in Brienne’s ear, behind her; she could feel the stir of Cersei’s breath as she spoke. “He fucked you, didn’t he? My brother.”

Brienne heard Pod, beside her, take a sharp shocked breath. She didn’t turn her head, either to him or to anyone else. She kept her eyes on the road.

“He must have been desperate,” Cersei murmured conversationally. “I can’t imagine it. Even up there in the North—there must have been _some_ women.”

So it went on, an endless repetitive babble on that one theme, all the way home. Brienne’s silence never discouraged her. She was, Brienne supposed, too angry and too powerless to stop clawing at _something_ , and Brienne was the only target in reach. It didn’t matter. Brienne had expected something of the kind, from her, and Pod finally began to follow her lead and to ignore the low lovely voice with its continuous stream of obscenities, to stare straight ahead at their road and not look left or right or anywhere but the next step and the next. 

When they came to the Keep, Brienne dismounted and looked to Tyrion for instruction. 

“Go,” he said. “Pod can take her to her cell.”

She nodded, and went. Tyrion caught up with her on the stairs a few minutes later, halfway to her desk.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t. I didn’t think. I shouldn’t have let her—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Brienne said, taking her chair. “Where have you put her?” Them. Jaime. Her throat went horribly tight for a moment. She reached blindly for the closest piece of paper, made herself stare at it. 

“In the west tower cells,” he said. “Alone.”

She gave a nod, still looking at her paper. She had no idea what it was.

“I’ve put Jaime in the east,” he said. “Near me.”

“I’ll tell the kitchens,” Brienne said and Tyrion put his hand over the paper, forced her to look at him.

“I _am_ sorry,” he said. “I didn’t—I thought she would be. Weaker.”

That made her smile, a twisted involuntary thing.

“You’ve underestimated her before,” she said and he nodded, exhaled. They sat in silence a long moment. Daylight had warmed the city now, falling in bright squares across the room.

“Will you see him?” Tyrion asked at last. His voice was cautious, unhopeful. “He wants. He begged to see you.”

“I don’t care what he wants,” Brienne heard herself say, in a startlingly fierce voice. She was shaking. She took three long breaths, stilled herself. “I’ll see him at his trial.”

Tyrion said no more. He left. After a while, her blind gazing turned into sight. The paper in front of her was the map of the new sewer. She took up her pen and took another ten breaths, counted them out, and then, once more, got back to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still have no idea and am still very sorry.


	3. Chapter 3

The King set a trial date for a month after the arrest. He seemed no more—or less—interested in the Lannister problem than in any other. Tyrion told him that there might well be Lannister loyalists in the Kingdoms who would be willing to rise against the crown, that an investigation was called for, but he only shrugged.

“Investigate, then, if it brings you peace,” he said in his remote voice. “We shall see your brother and your sister in a month from today.”

“Thank you, your grace,” Tyrion said and hesitated. The King waited, held up his hand when Bronn would have spoken.

“My sister,” Tyrion said. “She’s not well. May I have permission to move her?”

“Move her _where_?” Bronn demanded. 

“A guest room,” Tyrion said. “The cells are too cold for her.”

Bronn snorted and was about to speak, when the King interrupted.

“And your brother?”

“Jaime is content to remain in the cells,” Tyrion said in a tight voice. “He’s not been as ill as she has, your grace.”

The King went into one of his curious extended silences. No one interrupted, not even Bronn. They all sat, waiting, until his eyes returned to the room.

“Yes,” he said. “Move her. And your brother.”

“He doesn’t—” Tyrion hesitated. His gaze crossed Brienne’s for a moment, withdrew instantly. “He refuses to be moved, your Grace. I asked him.”

“He belongs in the White Sword Tower,” the King said. Brienne didn’t flinch, held his gaze when it met hers, waited. Tyrion was still, watching.

“Tell him,” the King said at last, his gaze returning to Tyrion. “Tell him he may choose. The cells or the Tower.”

“He’ll choose the cells,” Tyrion said at once. 

“Perhaps,” the King said. “Ser Davos. What progress on the new docks?”

Ser Davos, too, had been looking at Brienne and he jumped and cleared his throat at the sound of his name. He turned his attention back to the King and began a lengthy description of the state of the docks. Brienne became aware that the grip of her hand on her knee was painful, that she was near bruising her own skin. She relaxed her fingers slowly. Her memory kept returning, unbidden, to the common room of the White Sword Tower, the first time she had been there. Jaime’s first gift. The gleam of the armour. The way he had looked at her, the delicate poise of the sword—Oathkeeper—on his arm. Everything, that day, had seemed to be touched with gold; in her memory, Jaime and the room and the sword were bathed in an unearthly light. He belonged in the cells or in the Tower. _Her_ Tower. 

She followed Tyrion out of the chamber. He glanced at her over his shoulder and nodded and they proceeded in silence until everyone else was gone and they had reached an empty corridor. Then he turned and faced her. He looked very tired, but there was a hint of the old half-mischievous expectancy in his eyes. 

“Is he ill?” she demanded and he shook his head.

“Not very,” he said. “Malnourished, mostly. Worn to the bone. But not ill enough that the cold will kill him.”

Brienne closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, opened them again. Tyrion’s expression sobered as he waited for her to speak.

“Put him in the Tower,” she said, at last. “There’s a room empty on the fifth floor.” Two floors up from her own room. She need never see him, there, at least until the trial. She would simply avoid the entire fifth floor.

“He wants to stay in his cell,” Tyrion said.

“He’s a _prisoner_ ,” Brienne snapped. “I don’t care what he wants. Put him in the Tower.”

Tyrion smiled then, very faintly, still sadly.

“As you wish, Lord Commander,” he said, with a courtly nod and she nodded stiffly back and left him. No one, it seemed, would countenance the idea that Jaime and Cersei be placed anywhere near each other. Not the same set of cells, not the same rooms. She supposed Tyrion feared Cersei’s influence, thought that Jaime would hold to his confessions and his intention to bend the knee to the new King only so long as he was out of sight of her. That, Brienne thought, was probably true. She could not bring herself to ask the question. Tyrion could keep his brother and sister apart for any reason or none. She would not ask; there was no wall high enough, thick enough, to protect her from that question and its possible answers. 

The month passed painfully slowly. Her mind insisted on numbering the days till the trial, the day she would have to see Jaime and keep her face still. Twenty-nine days. Twenty-eight. She flung herself into work with a passion that, she saw, was beginning to alarm Tyrion and Pod; she disliked the glances of concern that they shared with each other, disliked the unhappy turn of Pod’s mouth, but she couldn’t help it and the men certainly benefited from the extra training and sparring. The dreams were worse than ever. In one, she came into the common room on a golden day and found Jaime dead on the floor, a skeleton of himself. In one, he was entwined with Cersei in Brienne’s bed and she stumbled from the room followed by his regretful gaze and her echoing laughter. In one—it was foolish to dwell on them in the day, she told herself. She would not see Jaime till his trial. Until then, she would keep her mind on her work. Eleven days. Ten. The work was running thin, now. She found herself asking Tyrion for more to do, and receiving a mild rebuff. She was reduced to reviewing the White Book, entry by entry, for every living member—she hesitated over Jaime’s entry, the last sentence, and then left it. It was too soon to say if it would turn true or false in the end. There were still so many ways for him to die for Cersei.

Six days before the trial, she saw Jaime from the window of her room. Tyrion was walking with him in the courtyard, in the early light of morning. Jaime was paler and a little thinner, with a little more grey in his beard, but he was no skeleton or stranger. It was Jaime. He had his head bent, listening to Tyrion who was speaking swiftly, furiously, in some distress; Jaime’s expression was remote. The guards behind him were the men who guarded the east tower cells. Her heart was beating very loud in her ears but otherwise, she found, she was quite calm. It was simply as if the walls around her had thickened to the point where she could hear no sound. The air was still, empty. Jaime and Tyrion finished their turn of their courtyard and disappeared from her sight. She finished getting dressed, with careful steady hands, and went to the common room. Pod was there, as she expected.

“Ser Brienne,” Pod said, smiling at the sight of her and then his smile faded. “What is it?”

“Will you,” she said, and cleared her throat. “A spar, if you would.”

“Of course,” Pod said—Pod, Jaime’s third and best gift—and he gave her the best battle she had had since peace had come. She’d taught him well and his strength was at its height. It lasted the best part of two hours, round after round, and when it was over the silence in her ears seemed less strange and muffling, more normal.

“I yield,” Pod said again, breathless and grinning now, and she hauled him to his feet, dropped the wooden blade. 

“Thank you,” she said and then, foolishly and unexpectedly, tears came, hot and so swift that she had no time to turn away before one spilled. 

“Oh,” Pod said under his breath and then he had her hands and was drawing her close. “Oh Brienne.” No _Ser_ , the first time he had omitted the title in months. She was weeping into Pod’s shoulder, ridiculously. Poor Pod. What could he be thinking? She tried to draw back and apologise but his grip only tightened.

“There’s no one to see,” he said in her ear. “It’s all right. It’s only me, my lady.”

She gulped and forced herself still. The morning had come as a shock, because of its unexpectedness. That was all. She drew away from Pod, more gently now, and he let her. Absurdly, somehow, he had a kerchief and was holding it out to her. Of course he kept a kerchief on him for these occasions. She gave him a helpless smile and took the thing, scrubbed her face and blew her nose and straightened herself for the day.

“Thank you,” she said again and he shrugged.

“What’s a squire for?” he said lightly and that made her laugh.

“You’re not a squire now,” she reminded him. “Ser Podrick.”

“I’ll be _your_ squire till I die,” he said, still in that light easy tone. “You just tell me when.”

That was too much. She couldn’t speak, could only touch his shoulder and shake her head. 

“Breakfast,” she said at last and he nodded and they went in. She felt relieved all day, curiously lightened; she had not remembered that a burst of tears could do that but it seemed it could. 

At the small council meeting, Tyrion spoke of the coming trial—he had found a handful of former Lannister bannermen that Cersei had, mostly unsuccessfully, tried to suborn—and of news from beyond the Wall, sent by Jon Snow via the Queen in the North. The news from the North seemed less than urgent—there were no more wights, it seemed, anywhere—but it seemed to hold more of the King’s attention than the idea of a plot to take his throne. He took the note from Jon Snow that the Queen had sent and held it in his hands for a long moment, his eyes changing; about the Lannister trial he said nothing at all. A King who feared no threats to his power was a strange thing, Brienne thought, and oddly unsettling. What _did_ the King fear or desire? His eyes came to her face as she had the thought and he smiled a little, a thin quirk of the lips. Nothing, she thought. No fear in him. No desire. No need for walls.

Bronn leaned over the table, past her. He wanted to know about the money, where Cersei had found the funds to offer to bribe anyone.

“There was no money,” Tyrion said. “Only promises. A Lannister always—”

“Don’t you dare,” Bronn said and Tyrion grinned faintly and shook his head. 

“Less true than it once was,” he said. “Jaime says that all her letters came back unanswered. That was why she decided to send him to the city.”

 _Jaime says._ Present tense. The memory of the morning came back and brought pain with it, lancing and brief. Perhaps she ought to envy the King, she thought. No fear, no desire, no need for walls. She thought again of Pod’s hand on her arm, his smile. No. She couldn’t envy the King. 

“Ser Jaime,” she said and everyone fell silent. She kept her eyes on Tyrion. “Has he said why he chose to come to you? Not to go on with the plan?”

“It’s a fucking stupid plan,” Bronn pointed out.

“That’s never stopped him before,” she said dryly and Tyrion tried to smile.

“True,” he said. “Thank you, Ser Brienne. He says he wanted Cersei stopped. He came to me because he couldn’t stop her himself. He’s been trying for a year.”

Brienne forced her mind away from the idea of that year. She couldn’t think of that yet, the year he had spent alive with Cersei while she mourned. 

“So he never had treasonous intent,” she said. “He came here _intending_ to bend the knee to the King and confess the truth. Yes?”

“Yes,” Tyrion said huskily and Sam Tarly stirred.

“That’ll have to be proved,” he said in his mild apologetic voice. “Properly, I mean, in a trial.”

“Of course,” Tyrion said. “But it’s important that this council understand what it is he’s confessed to and what he hasn’t. Thank you, Brienne.”

She nodded and they turned to the next news, the raids of looters that were attacking the villages of the Crownlands and Brienne’s plan to root them out. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she saw Jaime alive in the courtyard of the Red Keep, his head a little bent, grey in his hair and beard. The feeling of lightness in the pit of her stomach grew. He had betrayed and left her, he had been his sister’s fool all his life and she had been a fool to ever let him touch her, but still. She was glad that he was alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who’s commented! I don’t know what is up with this story, but I can’t seem to stop writing it. I expect the next update will take slightly more time.


	4. Chapter 4

The morning of the trial was crisp and cold. Despite the early hour—the small, bright, distant sun of winter had barely cleared the sky when the court convened—the room was packed. Brienne had not thought so many of the small nobility of King’s Landing had survived the great wars, but here they were, dressed in the finest robes that had survived the fire, eager for some entertainment after the barren frightening years that had passed. They were all chattering and excited, giggling and murmuring and shifting in anticipation. Like girls at a tourney, Brienne thought, unaware of the reality of what was to come, the blood. She could almost envy them. She herself felt nothing at all, standing in her chosen corner of the room— to the right of the dais, out of the direct line of vision of anyone in the dock—and listening to the thumping beat of her own heart. It was loud in her own ears but she knew she look rigid and solid enough, enclosed in armour like one of the statues of knights that had lined the walls of her father’s hall at home. All she had to do was to stand. 

The King sat in judgment, Ser Davos on his right, Sam Tarly on his left. With the iron throne gone, replaced by a wheelchair, there was room on the dais for two more chairs, placed behind the bench of judges. Tyrion was to the left of Sam Tarly; Bronn to the right of Ser Davos. No one had interfered with Brienne’s placement of herself, standing, a few feet from Bronn. It made sense that the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard should be placed where she could easily defend the bench against any sudden attack from anyone. No one had required her to produce that reason, however. They had let her be. Pod had come in early, and stationed himself, without a word, in the opposite corner of the room; near enough to be a comfort, not so near that she was obliged to look at or speak to him. She could not, she thought, speak to anyone today. Her mouth was a stone.

They brought Jaime in first. He looked as he had when she had glimpsed him in the courtyard. Greyer, thinner, but himself. His golden hand was gone, replaced by a simple prosthetic in wood. He looked at no one as they led him to the dock, not even at Tyrion or the King; his gaze was hazy, turned inward, his chin a little dropped so that he was looking at the floor. 

“Ser Jaime Lannister,” the King said. “You are accused of treason against the realm. What is your plea?”

“Guilty,” Jaime said to the floor. His voice was flat and low, distant. Brienne, despite herself, felt heat gather behind her eyes. Of course. Of course he would choose this way to die with his sister, denied all others. Why had she been such a fool as to expect him to fight?

“Guilty of what?” the King asked.

“Treason,” Jaime repeated obediently. He had still not looked at anyone in the room, although Tyrion was glaring at him with an agonised intensity that would have moved a stone.

“Explain,” the King said. “What treason?” 

Jaime did stir then, a little bewilderment gathering in his brow. His gaze drifted vaguely over the bench of judges, skimmed his brother and Bronn. It came to Brienne. She had prepared for this moment for the entire month, from the first day she had heard he was alive. Nothing could have prepared her for the shock of it, the sudden intensity with which he focused on her, the pain that came alive in his face. His gaze jerked to the King, awakened.

“I betrayed the realm,” he said, in a more resonant voice. “I chose my sister.”

Tyrion leaned forward, urgently. Sam Tarly glanced at him and then cleared his throat, spoke up in his soft apologetic voice.

“If you could be more specific, Ser Jaime,” he said. “What is it that you say you’ve _done_? When did you do it? Um. And so on. Details.”

Jaime shut his eyes, opened them again.

“After the battle for Winterfell,” he said. His eyes grazed Brienne’s face again, jerked away again. “I came to King’s Landing to assist my sister.”

“Against Daenerys Targaryen?” Tarly said, in his mild inquiring voice and Jaime scowled.

“Against any threat whatever,” he said.

“You can’t have committed treason against King Bran before he was named King,” Tarly said firmly. “Or so I think.” He looked to the other judges; Ser Davos nodded. The King was smiling a little, his dark opaque eyes fixed on Jaime’s face.

“I think I can have,” Jaime said, with a trace of his old jauntiness. “I threw him out of a window when he was eight years old.”

An excited stir in the crowd, some gasps. Brienne’s head was aching with the gathering tears, held back by pure force. This was worse than anything she could have prepared for. Now he would begin the recital of the rest of his crimes, all his sacrifices to Cersei, and she would have to listen again to that chant of devotion. 

“Irrelevant,” the King said. “I wasn’t King then. I wasn’t even myself. What have you done in the last year, Ser Jaime? The first of my reign?”

Jaime sighed. His eyes met Tyrion’s at last, resigned.

“Nothing,” he said, monotone. “Fished. Cared for my sister.”

“And what has your sister been doing?” Ser Davos asked.

“Dying,” Jaime said. The crowd stirred again but Brienne could no longer hear their gasps and murmurs. Jaime’s voice was the only sound in the world. “She miscarried, I think, a few weeks after we escaped the fire. There wasn’t enough food. The bleeding wouldn’t stop. And she caught—cold, I thought. At first. It never left her, whatever it was.”

“A tumour,” Sam Tarly said, to the other judges. “Very far gone, I’m afraid.” He looked at Jaime, his kindly round face sorrowful. “I’ve done my best to make her comfortable.”

“It’s no treason to care for a dying woman,” Ser Davos said. “But that hasn’t been all, has it? You sent some letters.”

“She wrote some letters,” Jaime said. “I let her.” 

“Treasonous letters?”

“I suppose so,” Jaime said, tiredly. “She wants the throne. She’ll do anything to have it. I let her do what she could.”

There was a long silence. Jaime looked drained, exhausted to the point of collapse. For a moment, he swayed as if he might fall. Brienne felt the beginning of an impulse to start forward to him, restrained it. He was surrounded by men who would catch him if he fell. He had no need of her.

“Call her,” the King said at last and Jaime shut his eyes and kept them closed. He had not looked at Brienne again; she was free, if she could call it that, to look at him. She couldn’t stop. It felt like a kind of greed, looking at him, a compulsion, like what she imagined the first glass of wine after a year of abstinence might be to a drunk. His face was the most familiar in the world to her, after her own, and yet she was mesmerised by every detail of it. His eyes, his brow, his beard, the lines in his forehead and at the corners of his eyes, the tremor at the corners of his mouth. Jaime.

The doors opened, to admit Cersei. Jaime’s eyes opened and met Brienne’s; for a long trapped moment, she held his gaze. He looked so—helpless, she thought. Hopeless. He was looking at her as if she was a distant vision, something very far away and long ago. There was a kind of yearning to his look; yearning, she supposed, for the simpler time of the battle for Winterfell, for that moment in time when he had believed he could be an ordinary soldier and take a woman to his bed simply for the sake of warmth and pleasure, a little easy affection between friends. Cersei was in the room, placed in the dock next to Jaime, and still he was looking at Brienne and Brienne was looking at him.

”Lady Cersei Lannister,” the King said, and that broke the spell. Brienne looked at Cersei. She was still very thin, very pale, but she had her hair in long intricate braids and she was wearing a dress of crimson and gold; her face, as she looked back at the King, was as fierce and alive with malice as ever. It was impossible to see her as a dying woman. “You are charged with treason against the realm. What is your plea?”

”I deny the charge,” Cersei said in a ringing voice. “I deny your right to make it. I deny your right to hold court in this place. I am the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, by blood right and by conquest. Who are you?”

Ser Davos sat back in his chair, in the long pause that followed, and looked at Sam Tarly.

”Treason,” he said, simply. “Grand Maester?”

Tarly nodded, looking troubled.

”Treason,” he agreed. “Your grace?”

”I cannot return your children to you,” the King said to Cersei and Brienne saw her face tighten with rage and grief. “And I cannot give you the iron throne. There is no iron throne. That time is over.” 

Cersei said nothing. She was trying to maintain her look of contempt at the King, Brienne saw, but she was finding it hard to do so. She could not understand him.

”That time is over,” the King said again, more slowly. His gaze shifted, inward. An uncomfortable silence fell. Cersei looked at Tyrion, her meaning plain in her face. _What is this creature you have put into power?_ She looked at Bronn and at Ser Davos and the disgust in her expression deepened. Then she came to Brienne and Brienne looked away, at the ground. She could not look at Cersei, not with Jaime standing at her shoulder. She wasn’t solid enough for that, not yet.

The King made a noise in his throat, something resembling a sigh, and returned to the room. 

“I can give you two choices,” he said. “You may stay here in our court, if you wish, and die in what comfort you can. Or you may drink.” He looked at Sam Tarly, who looked deeply unhappy but produced a little vial from his pocket, the liquid within as clear as glass. 

”It’s quite painless,” he said softly. “And very quick.”

Cersei’s mouth distorted, looking at the vial. For a moment, the hatred in her face wavered into uncertainty, then into longing. Then it hardened again and she turned in the dock, to face the nobles of the court.

”I am your Queen,” she said. “Will you let them murder me?”

No one spoke. Jaime—Brienne’s gaze returned to him, inevitably, helplessly—was looking at Cersei with a terrible pity in his face. Cersei looked a moment longer at the silent men and women of the court, rage growing in her face, and then turned back to the King.

”Give it to me,” she said, her voice thick. “I’ll drink it.”

The King nodded.

”As you will,” he said. “Ser Jaime? The same choice is before you.”

”What?” Brienne heard herself say. There was a rushing noise in her ears. “He hasn’t been convicted, your Grace.”

“No,” the King said, looking at her with his distant gaze. “But the choice is his. He may stay and serve in my court, if he wills. Or he may die with his sister. If he wills.”

Brienne’s throat closed. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t look at Jaime. It was all over then. If the choice was left to Jaime—

” _Give_ it to me,” Cersei said, furiously, and Sam Tarly handed the little deadly vial to a guard, who carried it gingerly to Cersei in the dock. She took it and looked at it and then turned her eyes to Jaime, beside her. She took his good hand in hers, folded it around the vial with hers. Her voice became low and intimate, as if she and Jaime were only ones in the room. “You drink first. Then I will.”

Brienne shut her eyes. A wave of dizziness was coming over her; she thought she might fall. She couldn’t fall.

” _Jaime_ ,” Tyrion said pleadingly. 

”Jaime,” Cersei said. “Please. Together.”

“Brienne—will someone look to the Lord Commander?” Jaime said sharply, urgently, and she realised that she had slipped, that Bronn of all people had her arm and was holding her upright. She couldn’t breathe. The voices came to her as if she was underwater, under a flood of icy water, distorted and far away.

”We’re the only ones who matter,” Cersei was saying. “ _Jaime._ ”

”No,” she thought she heard Jaime say and then blackness closed over her head, everything faded.

When she woke, it was evening and she was in her own bed in her own room. A candle burned on the small table and Pod was there, and Tyrion, and Sam Tarly. They turned when she stirred and Tarly was the first to reach her, taking her wrist in his gentle grip and beginning a count of her pulse.

”What happened?” she asked feebly. Her mind felt raw and weak, uncertain; she had the feeling that something terrible had happened but she had no recollection what.

”You fainted,” Pod said matter-of-factly. “And we let you sleep. The Grand Maester said you were worn out.”

”I’m,” Brienne said and then memory flooded in. Her vision went white. “Jaime?”

”He’s fine,” Tyrion said hastily. “He didn’t drink.”

For a long moment, she couldn’t grasp the sense of the sentence. He hadn’t died? How was that possible? Who had stopped him?

”He’s offered to go to the Wall,” Tyrion went on, seeming not to notice her incomprehension. “I’ve told him he’d be more useful here.”

”Yes,” she said and tasted salt. She was weeping, she realised, a slow slide of tears that she couldn’t stop or even try to control.

”Go,” Pod said and the others went. He took her hand and kissed it, hesitated and then kissed her forehead too. “Sleep, my lady. You need to.”

“But,” she said, her voice thick and unfamiliar, as small as a child’s. “What happened? Who stopped him?”

Something odd happened to Pod’s expression, a twist to the mouth that she couldn’t interpret.

”I can’t tell you that,” he said at last. “She drank. He didn’t. We brought you here.”

”But,” she said. Her vision was fading, going soft at the edges. “I don’t understand.”

”I know,” Pod said, faraway. “Rest now.” And she meant to ask him again, to insist on an answer, but the darkness had become a tide, warm and soft, and sleep took her before she could speak again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um. Yes. I guess I felt the need to go full melodrama with this one? We will be back to our regularly scheduled silent angst in the next chapter.


	5. Chapter 5

When she woke, it was broad day. She could hear voices from the courtyard and the back kitchens, drifting in through the open windows; it was past noon. She had slept half the day away. She sat up in bed, bewildered, and then memory ambushed her. The trial. Jaime’s pained, yearning, far-off look. The poison. And then she had _fainted_ , like a maiden from a song. 

She felt heat creep into her ears and up her neck as she thought of it, remembering that Bronn had caught her arm and then her waist, that her forehead had nearly collided with his shoulder as her knees gave. She had fainted, of all the ridiculous things to have done. And they had let her sleep in this morning, as if she was some delicate lady with a headache and no duties to see to. 

She looked down at herself; she was in the shirt and breeches she had worn yesterday. Her armour was standing by the wall opposite, seeming almost to stare accusingly at her. She jerked herself out of bed and washed in the cold water in the basin, got dressed and armoured and only then met her own eyes in the small mirror in the corner of the room. She looked defensive and flustered, rather red in the face, but robust enough. Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, she reminded herself. She had things to do.

She stepped into the common room of the White Sword Tower, luminous with winter sunshine, and found a little conclave of men there: Bronn, Ser Davos, Pod. And Jaime. They all turned at the sight of her and she felt herself flush painfully. She still felt raw and exposed, her armour a thin shell and nothing beneath it that could protect her; all the painful work of the last year, the walls, seemed to have collapsed overnight. She couldn’t meet Jaime’s eyes. She looked, instead, at Pod.

“Lord Commander,” Pod said formally. “We were awaiting you. There’s been some news from Dorne.”

“What news?” 

“Quentyn Martell is dead,” Ser Davos said. “The new prince is threatening war.”

War. Again. She was back on the battlements of Winterfell as men fell around her; she was back on the streets of King’s Landing after the dragonfire, among the endless piles of dead and dying, the smell of burning flesh. She tasted blood and ash. Instinctively, automatically, her eyes met Jaime’s; he looked as appalled as she did. 

”Why?” she asked and Ser Davos shrugged.

”Why does anyone go to war?” he said. “He’s young and hungry and he sees that the kingdom is weak. He wants to conquer.”

”The King?” Brienne asked.

”Tyrion’s with him,” Jaime said and she made herself look at him again, made her features as expressionless as she could. He still looked tired but there was a life in him now, an energy. “The small council meets in half an hour.” He smiled at her, a small tentative quirk of the lips. “I’m Master of War.”

“Oh,” she said. There was a catch in her voice that she couldn’t disguise. His smile faded, slowly, as he looked at her, his expression turning sombre. Brienne looked away. “Good.” She turned to Bronn. “Can we afford war, if it comes to it?”

”With Dorne? No,” he said baldly. “If it’s war, we’re fucked. Not enough men, hardly any money.”

”We’ve got ships,” Ser Davos pointed out. “And they’ve got to cross the Red Mountains. How many of them will survive that?”

”More than we’ve got,” Bronn said. “That’s what he’s gambling on.”

”Winterfell will aid us,” Brienne said. “If it comes to war.”

”Better hope so,” Bronn said cheerfully. He looked at Pod and Ser Davos. “Come on, then, you two.” He jerked a thumb at Jaime and Brienne. “Better let them get on with it. You’ve got half an hour to sort yourselves out, before the small council meeting. Don’t fuck it up this time.”

“Fuck _off_ , Bronn,” Jaime said furiously and then hesitated, looking at Brienne. “I did. I did wish to speak to Ser Brienne alone.”

She felt sick, suddenly flooded with a terribly vivid sense memory of that last night at Winterfell. He’d looked so astonished. She’d begged him not to leave her; she’d sobbed. She couldn’t stand the humiliation of a return to that night, the pity and guilt and friendship he would want to offer now.

“No,” she said sharply, and signalled to Pod to stay. “There’s nothing you need to say—nothing I wish to hear.” 

Jaime looked as if she had stabbed him. He gave a jerky nod and turned, left the room. The others were looking at her with expressions that she couldn’t read but that made her skin prickle with discomfort. 

”Excuse me,” she said and left too, climbed the stairs to her own chambers. She sat at her desk in silence and tried desperately to shore up what was left of her walls, the stone and ice feeling that had carried her through the last year. But it was too late. She would see Jaime again in half an hour. She would see him almost every day, for as long as she remained in King’s Landing and she was Commander of the Kingsguard and he was Master of War. She tried to think of Dorne, of Winterfell, of the Red Mountains, of ships, sewers, battle formations, men. Nothing worked; no barrier held. She put her face in her hands. 

A knock came at her door.

”Enter,” she said, hastily wiping her face, and then drew a sharp breath. It was Jaime.

”Ser Jaime,” she said, clutching at the small measure of distance that the title provided, as he came to stand before her. She was aware her eyes were still reddened, wet. Perhaps he had only come to talk about the war. ”What is it?”

”Do you want me to go?” he asked. “I told Tyrion—I can go North, to the Wall. Or to the Rock. Or East. Anywhere.”

She stared.

”What do you mean?” she demanded. “You’re Master of War.”

”I don’t have to be,” he said miserably. “If you don’t want me to.”

“If _I_ —what?” Irritation came to her aid, sharpened her voice, made it possible to frown at him, even to glare at him. “Don’t be a fool. What do _you_ want to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and her anger collapsed into something sadder at the unhappy note in his voice. “I don’t know what I’m—for. Now.”

Without Cersei. Pain pierced through her chest, passed. He looked so lost.

”You chose to live,” she said, at last, as gently as she could. “You must have had a reason.”

He blinked at her, looking puzzled, then astonished, then incredulous.

“And you don't know what that is,” he said blankly. “Really.” She gave him an annoyed look.

“I was indisposed, if you remember,” she said and then her breath caught at the change in his expression, the raw tenderness that came into his face. He had looked at her like that, once, at Winterfell, when she had said something that had accidentally betrayed her fear of boring or disgusting him in bed; she was suddenly overpowered by the memory, the look on his face, his hand on her cheek, what he had said. He’d been so kind to her, for those few weeks. Her vision blurred with tears and she blinked them away, furiously. She heard him sigh.

“ _You_ wanted me alive, Brienne,” he said, his voice racked and low. “The gods alone know why. What is it you want me to do?”

“You’re a knight,” she said, through the tightness in her throat. “You know what to do. Keep your vows.”

“They’re not my vows,” he said, and the desolation in his voice weakened her still more. She couldn’t hold any sort of line against him when he sounded like that; she wanted to touch him, clenched both her fists in her lap. “I’ve broken them too often.”

“Then make them again,” she said. “You’re still a knight.”

He shook his head and then his face changed, lit. He looked at her with sudden longing.

“Will you?” he asked. She gave him a confused look.

“Will I what?”

“Make me a knight again.”

She scoffed.

“Don’t be—” but then he was kneeling before her desk, in the bright day, and there was no trace of mockery at all in his face, not a hint of a smile, only a hopeless longing and despair that made her chest ache with unwilling sympathy. 

“Please, Brienne,” he said. “I know I don’t deserve—“

She couldn’t hear him finish that sentence. She stood and came to him, strode around the desk and drew Oathkeeper. She had done this a few times already, in her year of service in the Kingsguard, and the words never failed to move her. But with Jaime—her voice struggled at first, failed, recovered. 

“In the name of the Warrior,” she said, when she could speak, her voice shaking. “I charge you to be brave.” He closed his eyes. The sunlight brought out glints of gold and grey in his hair, the lines that marked his face. She’d forgotten, somehow, how beautiful he was, how breathtaking. “In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just.” Her voice had strengthened now. Jaime’s lips were trembling. “In the name of the Mother.” His eyes opened, dark and earnest. “I charge you to protect the innocent.” She drew a long breath. Her voice shook again on his name. “Rise, Ser Jaime Lannister.” 

When he rose, his face was so bright that she couldn’t look at him. He looked younger, somehow, renewed. She sheathed Oathkeeper and then found he had come closer, that his hand was on her shoulder and he was looking up at her with something like adoration.

“Brienne,” he said. “Thank you. I don’t deserve—”

“Stop _saying_ that,” she snapped. She couldn’t bear to hear it again. _She’s hateful and so am I._ “We can’t deserve our vows. We only live up to them, if we choose. I’ve seen you live up to yours.”

“I didn’t mean my vows,” Jaime said. “I meant you. I don’t deserve that you should even look at me again.”

She looked away. The warmth in his voice was intolerable. The touch of his hand on her shoulder, the movement of his breath as he spoke. He was far too close, and she couldn’t bring herself to draw away.

“The small council,” she said. “We should. Go.”

His hand dropped from her shoulder. He was looking at her searchingly, intently, and she couldn’t meet the look. It was all too much. She turned to the door.

“Come on,” she said.

He drew a deep breath, still watching her, and then nodded.

”Lead the way,” he said and smiled, rather painfully. “I’ll follow.”

They went down to the council chamber together, Jaime just behind her. When they entered the room, he drew her chair for her and she saw Tyrion’s faint smile and Bronn’s smirk and felt herself flush with annoyance. They all thought Jaime wanted her, she knew, that was the joke they were sharing—his inexplicable attraction to her, of all women. They had no idea what Jaime felt for her, his respect and his friendship; they all believed those few fevered weeks after the battle, when he had been drunk with victory and freedom from dread, had been more than a passing impulse on his part. She glanced up and found him watching her, the glow of his renewed vows still on him, and she had to smile. It didn’t matter what the others thought. She and Jaime could forget that disastrous interlude, the momentary collapse of all her common sense, and go on as they always should have, brothers in arms. It was better than anything she had ever hoped to have again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I now have some idea where this is going. Thanks to everyone who’s read and commented and joined me in this wallowing! I have just decided to run with it and indulge myself to the nth degree. I think there’s one more chapter remaining, which should be up in the next few days.


	6. Chapter 6

War with Dorne turned out to be an inevitability. The new prince was no Martell, but a pirate lord who had overrun the Dornish court in alliance with House Blackmont; his aim was the conquest and pillaging of all Westeros, pure and simple. Tarth was under siege. Gendry Baratheon had gone to Brienne’s father’s aid but the situation was desperate and similar messages for aid were coming from all over the Stormlands. Some part of Brienne simply wanted to take ship for Tarth, to take her sword to the defence of her father and her people, but her vow to serve as Kingsguard held her and she knew that the men she had trained, whom Jaime sent to the defence of Tarth and the other islands, would fight well and faithfully.

It was a strange war, fought from a room in the Red Keep and fought with strange weapons. The King _knew_ things, from the smallest detail of every coming battle to the movements of every contingent of enemy troops to the intentions of every enemy lord and commander. No one dared ask how he knew; Jaime simply took what he was told, and made his plans, and so the war was somehow being won, with a handful of men and hardly any money. Battle after battle was pre-empted, avoided, fought, won; Tarth broke the siege, and the Stormlands were free. But, as Bronn had predicted, a contingent of men did straggle through the Red Mountains and arrive at the gates of King’s Landing, armed and desperate under their desperate leader, making a last stand.

It didn’t, in the end, feel like much of a battle. After Winterfell, she supposed, nothing would again; the men from Dorne were only men, who could be cut down and killed like any other. She fought at Jaime’s side, as she had at Winterfell, but the battle never came close to the horror and desperation of the long night. It was only another battle. And yet she felt strangely shaken in the aftermath, in the release of victory. Men were drinking and laughing; Jaime kept gazing at her; she was at table with Tyrion and Pod and Jaime and Bronn; it was all too much like an echo of another night that she had done her best to forget for the better part of two years. She set down her glass as soon as she could do so without being conspicuous, pushed back her chair.

”Off so soon, Lord Commander?” Tyrion said, raising his eyebrows at her. “Surely the night is young.”

”Good night,” she said, refusing the bait. She could feel Jaime watching her. He was always watching her now and despite the months of working with him every day—talking through battle plans and formations, arguing and agreeing, and fighting shoulder to shoulder—she was still not hardened to his gaze, the way he looked at her in the quiet moments. There was something so yearning about it, still, so sad and yet so hopeful. If she were stronger, she would have said something in reply to that unspoken plea: confronted his guilt, accepted his pity and his friendship. She wasn’t strong enough, certainly not tonight. She went to bed.

An hour later, as she lay staring at the ceiling, a knock came at her door. Her breath caught. He wouldn’t, surely. It was too cruel an echo of the past. Nevertheless, she braced herself before she opened the door.

It wasn’t Jaime. It was Tyrion, drunk. She stared down at him.

”What is it?” she demanded.

”It’s Jaime,” Tyrion said. “About Jaime, I mean.”

Anger swept over her, then, a wave of fury. All she wanted was to be left alone. Why could none of them see that?

”You’re drunk, Lord Tyrion,” she said firmly. “Good night. We’ll speak in the morning.”

She made to close the door but he put his hand in the way.

”I am drunk,” he agreed. “And I am sorry. And I don’t—I don’t for a moment deny you have every right to punish him. I only wanted to ask how long you mean to.”

”Punish him?” she repeated blankly and Tyrion stared at her fuzzily and then began to grin.

”Oh you must know,” he said. “Even you. He’s been—look at him. He’s _desperate_ to be back in your good graces. You must have seen it.”

“I don’t,” she said and then caught herself. “I’m not going to discuss your brother with you now. Good _night_ , Lord Tyrion.” She slammed the door, giving him a bare second to get his hand out of the way.

After that she couldn’t sleep. Anger burned in her, and something like grief. Not grief itself—she remembered grief, still, its terrible sharp edges, all those nights spent staring at Jaime’s ghost in the dark—but something resembling it, grief’s shadow. She thought of Tyrion and Bronn, with their hints and glances, as if what was between her and Jaime was some kind of obvious joke with an inevitable punchline. Of course they thought he would come back to her bed again and she would accept him—why not? She wasn’t the sort of woman anyone pictured with a broken heart.

How long did she mean to punish him, Tyrion had asked. Was she punishing Jaime? She thought back on the last year, the year since he had come back from the dead. He’d asked her for only one thing in that time, the gift of his renewed vows; she had given him that. She had spent hours with him alone, bent over maps, his cheek almost touching hers, arguing and planning and never letting him see—she thought—how his proximity choked her, how the low burn of pain in her chest flared every time he smiled or looked at her or his hand brushed hers on the table. She had been so, so careful to protect him from the remains of her misplaced anger, her misplaced foolish hopes from the time at Winterfell. And now Tyrion said she was punishing him.

She couldn’t sleep. Early the next morning, she entered the common room of the White Sword Tower and found the White Book, opened it for the first time in a year to Jaime’s page. She read her own words over slowly, remembering vividly the moment of writing them, how rigid she had felt, iced-over. She took the pen and began, with deliberation, to cross out the final line, hatching it over so that no word of it could be seen; her hand shook and her vision was blurry, so it took far longer than it should have. At last, she put the pen down and wiped her face and heard a small sound, a noise like a sigh. Jaime. Jaime was in the room, watching her; from the look on his face, he had been there for a while.

”I wondered when you would do that,” he said quietly. “If you ever would.” He came to her and she rose to face him but he didn’t even try to touch her. He only looked at what she had done—the blackened-out sentence where no trace of the words _died_ and _his_ and _Queen_ could be seen—and nodded.

”Good,” he said on an exhale and then smiled, flipped the book closed, looked at her again. “I see you haven’t started on _your_ page, by the way. Why not?”

“There hasn’t been time,” she said. He was smiling at her, soft and wistful and unbearably sad, and she suddenly realised that she had to say something, that it was time. 

“Your brother came to me last night,” she said abruptly. “He says I’m punishing you.”

Jaime looked startled and then annoyed.

“I’ll talk to him,” he said grimly. “Tell him to keep his opinions to himself. He’s got no right—”

“That’s not what I meant to ask,” she said. Her breath was coming poorly now, shaky and uneven, but she managed to keep her voice steady enough. Jaime’s face was taking on that look of intensity that she dreaded, his eyes very dark. “Do _you_ think I’m—punishing you?” The very idea felt preposterous, articulated, but Jaime didn’t seem at all inclined to smile. There was a long moment of silence.

”No,” he said at last, in a defeated voice. “You don’t—trust me. I know that. That isn’t punishment, it’s just.” He shrugged. “Consequences.”

The resigned unhappiness in his voice was awful. He was beginning to turn away and she swallowed and made herself reach out, touch his arm, grip it. He went very still under the touch.

”I trust you with my life,” she said. “You know that.”

”I know,” he said, turning back to her. “And it’s more than I deserve. But you don’t—you don’t trust me with _yourself_. I know that, and I understand why.”

”I don’t know what you mean,” she said breathlessly and at that he gave her a look that brought the blood burning into her face. Of course she knew what he meant. He did, then, want to come back to her bed; the others had been right about that. “I can’t,” she said helplessly. “I just—I can’t.”

He nodded.

“I know,” he said gently, but he still looked so unhappy—he was still, so obviously, thinking that he didn’t _deserve_ her trust and that was why she was rejecting the idea of restoring that part of their comradeship—that she was driven to go on.

”I love you,” she made herself say and that, at least, drove the unhappy look from his face, replaced it with sheer astonishment. His mouth fell open. “I can’t—it was a mistake, at Winterfell, to think I could.”

”Could what?” Jaime demanded. “Brienne—” 

“When you left,” she said and he fell instantly silent. “I didn’t think I would. I felt. I wasn’t sure I could go on.”

”I’m sorry,” he said in a choked voice and she nodded.

”I know,” she said. “But I can’t—Jaime, I couldn’t bear it again.” Her voice was breaking but she ignored that. He’d heard her voice break before and she had to make him understand. “I just can’t.”

”You wouldn’t have to,” he said urgently. “You can’t think that I’d. Brienne, I was mad then. Broken. I’d never do that again. I love you.”

“Don’t _lie_ to me,” she snapped. “I’m not asking for a lie. I’m telling you why I can’t be your,” she hesitated. All the words were wrong, too sentimental or too obscene. A faint smile touched the corners of his mouth, as she struggled, and she glared at him and dragged the word out. “Your lover. I’m—”

”I don’t want you to be my _lover_ ,” Jaime interrupted and for one horrorstruck moment she thought she had misunderstood everything, that the derisive note in his voice, as he said that word, meant that she had humiliated herself again and more horribly than before. “I want you to be my—mine. My commander. My _wife_. My, I don’t know. My liege lord. _Brienne._ ”

Her mind was a blank. Of all the things she’d prepared for, all the painful or gentle or regretful things he might have said when she told him why she had to hold him at a distance, this was the one that had never occurred to her.

“Brienne,” Jaime said again in an urgent desperate voice and then the door opened. Pod, with Bronn on his heels. Both looked startled; a grin began to appear on Bronn’s face.

”Get out,” Brienne snarled and then gave Pod a look of apology. “Please.”

Bronn opened his mouth and Pod caught him by the collar and dragged him from the room, casting one look back over his shoulder at Brienne as he went. His look was warm and encouraging and it made her want to weep. And yet there was a dawning lightness at the pit of her stomach.

”Your liege lord,” she said to Jaime, disbelieving, and he grinned sheepishly and then nodded, the laughter fading from his face.

”Anything,” he said, and she caught him before he could make the ridiculous gesture of kneeling before her, held him, gripped his face in her hands and saw the unbelievable truth of his words in his eyes.

”I know I don’t,” he said and she kissed him, then, before he could say the word _deserve_. She’d forgotten what kissing him was like, heat and weakness and power all at once. She tasted tears—his—and kissed them away and then he had his hand in her hair and a shiver went through her that she knew he could feel from his sudden increase in confidence. She was pressed against a wall of the common room and Jaime was swiftly finding the catches in her armour—of course he knew where they all were—and she knew, dizzily, that she could not possibly have him here and now on the floor of this room where anyone might come in and that she probably would, in about five minutes, if no one did come in.

”Wait,” she said, desperately—her armour was in pieces on the floor and he had his hand on her breast now, above the thin cloth of her shirt—and he exhaled shakily against her ear and let her go. She was about to suggest that he take her to bed, at this hour of the morning and with the peace envoys from the new prince of Dorne due to arrive at court in less than an hour. She gave him a despairing look and he grinned back, wild and joyful.

”Duty calls?” he asked, and ran his thumb along her cheek where she knew her flush was at its height. Duty. She tried to get a grip on the word. Yes. His face was full of light and laughter and a kind of disbelief that made her throat tighten warningly.

”Yes,” she said and kissed him again, fiercely. “Let’s go.”

She could never remember, afterwards, what they had spoken of at that small council meeting. Dorne, presumably. Peace terms. Something about fortifying somewhere. Jaime had his hand on her knee, beside her, and she felt too dizzy and amazed to even mind the look of smug triumph on Tyrion’s face. Let him see or think or know what he liked. She didn’t care.

She married Jaime three weeks later, gave him her cloak and the promise of a place on Tarth beside her, and let everything she felt for him show in her face. All that day and night, she kept looking for signs of melancholy in him, mourning, regret, ambivalence, but there was nothing but that shining, disbelieving joy.

“I never thought you’d forgive me,” he said to her, the morning after their wedding, his head pillowed on her arm. “Never.”

”There was nothing to forgive,” she said. “You hadn’t promised me—”

”Yes I had,” he said fiercely. “Over and over and over again. And in the end I broke every vow and went back to her.” _Her._ His voice dropped on the word. There it was, the hint of darkness and regret.

“You loved her,” she said quietly, through the pain, and he looked at her silently for a long while, his gaze going distant.

”I did,” he said at last, slowly. “She was. She was so weak in the end, Brienne. I couldn’t leave her.”

”I know,” she said, and he took her hand and kissed it.

”She took such a long time to die,” he said, his breath catching. “And she hated me so much, by the end.” He folded his hand into hers, interlaced their fingers. “I wish I had been a better brother to her.”

”You did the best you could,” Brienne said and he closed his eyes, turned and pressed his face into her shoulder.

”I love you,” he said, muffled. “I don’t—”

”Say you don’t deserve me and I’ll throw you out of that window,” Brienne said and he huffed a laugh, turned his face up to hers.

”I don’t,” he said. “But I’ll try to live up to you. I swear it.”

She closed her eyes too, then, on a swell of happiness. Happiness still felt so dangerous, so precarious. She was afraid to surrender to it too completely. But then Jaime had surrendered himself so utterly to her; he kept saying things like that, tumbling every small defence the moment she had begun to build it.

”What are you thinking?” he asked and she shook her head.

”Nothing,” she said. “I’m just—happy.” It felt like an admission, even now, tinged with risk. She felt the brush of his lips over her cheek and opened her eyes. “I missed you.” Her voice cracked on the words and he made a low noise, drew her closer.

”I missed you,” he said and hesitated. “I saw you once, you know. That year. You were Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and I was in the fish market and I saw you ride past.” He swallowed and she saw the memory darken in his face, the yearning. “You looked so strong. So free.”

She tried to bring back the memory of that terrible year. Ice and stone. The dreams. She put her hand out for him, to be sure he was really there, his warm living body. He had chosen to live. She remembered the small deceptively innocent vial of poison, Cersei’s hand wrapping his around it, and shuddered.

”I wasn’t,” she said. “I was. Mad, I think. I can’t really remember. I dreamed of you.”

”Oh?” he said, looking interested, and she tried to smile.

”Not that kind of dream,” she said and his face went sombre.

”Tell me,” he said and she opened her mouth but no words came. Only the black feeling, thick and choking, freezing in her chest and throat. Jaime was watching her, a troubled crease in his brow, and she shook her head blindly.

”It was stupid,” she said thickly. Jaime was warm and close. He had married her the previous morning, sworn himself to her in the face of the King and her father and Lady Sansa and every noble family of Westeros. She still couldn’t find the words. “They were just bad dreams.”

”You missed me,” Jaime said softly and she nodded, the choking weight in her throat thickening. “You thought I’d left you. That I’d never loved you. What else?”

She shook her head. He reached out, cupped her cheek with his palm, stroked.

”Tell me,” he said, and she shut her eyes and let the awful weight dissolve, let the tears come. She had never cried in such a way in front of anyone before; even Renly’s death hadn’t reduced her so far. When it was over, she felt shaken and hollow and as weak as a straw doll. Jaime was still holding her, her face pressed against his shoulder now, his hand gentle in her hair.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think. I thought you’d discovered how little you needed me. You seemed so strong.” She heard the hint of a smile in his voice. “I never imagined you could _faint_.”

She tried to scowl at that but she didn’t have heart for it. She felt too drained and peaceful to mind, now, even about the fainting. Jaime’s hand in her hair, the warmth of him beside her. She felt herself beginning to dissolve into sleep, let herself go. Jaime was hers, encircling, warm, solid as a wall. He would catch her if she fell.


End file.
